Fantaseers: A Book of Memories

Mark Twain once said that the difference between the almost right word and
the right word was the same as the difference between a lightning
bug and lightning. Lewis Turco finds all of the lightning in this remarkable
set of memoirs about growing up in Connecticut in the 1950s, such as a bullet "whizzing
past my ear, dirling in the air" and "crashing through trees . . . snirtling
and giggling", as he shares recollections of his capers and misadventures
with the Fantaseers, a high school fraternity devoted to reading science
fiction and fantasy and raising Cain. Ironic as it may seem, four of the
hellions described herein later took religious orders, but not so for Turco,
the son of an Italian Baptist minister. Instead, he became one of this nation's
foremost writers and teachers. Just as it is fascinating to attend a high
school class reunion to discover what happened to one's old friends, so too
does this collection of escapades offer a scrutinizing lens into a band of
rambunctious and bright youth, and the destinies that awaited them. This
book is certain to stir any reader's own memories of youth's vivid haps and
mishaps.

Lewis Turco, Professor Emeritus of English Writing Arts, is perhaps the most widely respected poet-scholar in the United States. He took his B.A. from the University of Connecticut in 1959 and his M.A. from the University of Iowa in 1962. In 2000, he received an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, from Ashland University in Ohio.

Founding Director of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center (1962) and the Program in Writing Arts at the State University of New York at Oswego (1968) before his retirement in 1996, he was chosen to write the major essay on "Poetry" - as well as a dozen other entries - for the Encyclopedia of American Literature, and he was himself included in it as a biographee. His poems, essays, stories and plays have appeared in most of the major literary periodicals over the past half-century, and in over one hundred books and anthologies.

Lewis Turco's classic The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics has been called "the poet's Bible" since its original publication in 1968, through three editions and many printings. A companion volume, The Book of Literary Terms, The Genres of Fiction, Drama, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism and Scholarship, received a Choice award as an "Outstanding Academic Book" for the year 2000. A third book in th series, The Book of Dialogue, appeared in 2004. His first book of criticism, Visions and Revisions of American Poetry, won the Melville Cane Award of the Poetry Society of America in 1986, and his A Book of Fears: Poems, with Italian translations by Joseph Alessia, won the first annual Bordighera Bilingual Poetry Prize in 1998. Poems in his book of poetry, The Green Maces of Autumn: Voices in an Old Maine House (2002) won both the Silverfish Review Chapbook Award for 1989, and the Cooper House Chapbook Competition for 1990. In 1999, Professor Turco received the John Ciardi Award for lifetime achievement in poetry sponsored by the periodical Italian Americana and the National Italian American Foundation.

Editorial Reviews:

For all those who love honesty, purity of language and thought as well as great story telling, buy Lewis Turco's newest collection of stories Fantaseers: A Book of Memories. The tough and tender voice of America's master poet takes us on an unflinching journey through "the mutable past."

Reader, this is fair warning - and don't lend this book to any of your friends - it's such a good read, you won't get it back.
—Lois Roma-Deeley